


Moral Combat! Dean Winchester vs. Dexter Morgan Fight!

by Madiholmes



Category: Dexter (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Essays, Gen, Nonfiction, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:53:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madiholmes/pseuds/Madiholmes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Source Material can be found here:</p><p>http://www.reddit.com/r/fandomnatural/comments/2q16w8/moral_combat_dean_winchester_vs_dexter_morgan/</p>
    </blockquote>





	Moral Combat! Dean Winchester vs. Dexter Morgan Fight!

**Author's Note:**

> Source Material can be found here:
> 
> http://www.reddit.com/r/fandomnatural/comments/2q16w8/moral_combat_dean_winchester_vs_dexter_morgan/

Moral Combat!

Dean Winchester vs. Dexter Morgan

Fight!

 

It’s always startling to see Dean Winchester and Dexter Morgan compared together, and they’re often compared by different people. Nobody knows why the comparisons keep occurring, yet there’s something inherently uncanny about it. They’re completely different characters who live in completely different universes, and it feels like it should be incredibly easy to dismiss- Dean’s a drifting blue collar hero in the gothic Midwest with magic and religious powers. Dexter’s a staid, middle class serial killer in everyday Florida. The closest Dexter ever got to God was a delusional sociopath who murdered a bunch of people. Their motives and lifestyles are very much the opposite. But then something occurs on Supernatural with Dean, and again come the uneasy comparisons where nobody wants to dig too deep to see why Dean pings with Dexter. If it’s ignored, it’ll just go away. And then Dean gets a knife, and it’s all back.

Even with disparate backgrounds, they still have similar backgrounds. Having had their mothers murdered violently when they were at a very young age, the two are taught by a father to hunt and kill in order to save people.

To break them down, they’re two characters with tragic pasts who end up doing rather sketchy shit in order to kill things. Dexter is a psychopath who uses an external set of morals and ethics as set by “The Harry Code.” It’s less a real set of rules and laws and more of a superficial panacea. Most of the time he gets it right, and we generally root for him, sometimes he doesn’t (he is, after all, only human and allowed to make mistakes) in order to indulge in his serial murder tendencies. The most we ever see Dexter worry about his own moral judgments and choices are when they’re played out by the not-ghost of his father, Harry, and his lethal imaginary friend, the Dark Passenger (basically the Maris of the show). Between those two desires, Dexter found a relatively easy middle ground- he gets to kill and torture, but he does so under a set of guidelines. Whatever violence he commits is done to punish someone. There are people who consider him a superhero or vigilante, but he’s really not. He pretends to think that he only hunts those who fall through the legal cracks, but he’s deliberately sabotaged many an investigation just so he can play.

He’s ultimately a serial killer with a list of victims who most people couldn’t give two shits about. Nobody is going to mourn the murderer or rapist, so we let it pass for the most part. Dexter is Dexter, and we tend to accept that aspect of him.

Dean, on the other hand, was also raised by his father to go out hunting and kill things too. But his morals and ethics are all internalized. He doesn’t need an outside figure to teach him right or wrong. He might have a different mindset of what’s allowable and even slippery slope of morals at times, but he tends to be able to control himself without extra help. Where he loses that control is from outside forces changing his styles- being made a vampire, experiencing the Apocalypse, forced to torture in Hell (and then getting Stockholm’ed), Purgatory the Mark of Cain. None of these come from him, but from an outside pressure mostly forcing him to change and adapt. Dean doesn’t change easily at all (and god help the person who tries), but when he does, the results are hard and they’re extreme. Without that moral check within himself, he quickly goes dark and efficiently lethal.

However, Dean does have a darkness to him. It’s not serial killer sociopath, but a need to kill and destroy all evil. He’s a man who had monsters crawl out from under his bed, and killed his mommy. Then had to help raise his baby brother who also had monsters out trying to find him. He suddenly had the tools, responsibility, guilt, and ability to take down anything he found wicked. He didn’t just become a hunter, he became the best hunter, because it wasn’t just about hunting things, but about saving people. Whether it was saving his brother or random strangers, Dean always had that built into his work ethic. Dexter just kills at his own convenience and sport. Sometime he can save people, but sometimes he ignores that aspect so he can play with his victims further. There’s no tension to save innocent lives, it all revolves around his kill.

They’re both essentially committing the same acts, but one deals only with humans and the other primarily only targets supernatural entities. But where Dexter is perfectly happy and even content with his lifestyle choices, Dean is destroyed by his. He’s not a serial killer or a psychopath, and is well known for indulging in all self-destructive tendencies and vices (or as many are allowed by the FCC) in order to cope. Dexter never lost a night’s sleep about any of his kills, but Dean has had decades of self-medicating, sleeping around, doing drugs, and unable to really settle down for the most part in order to keep himself going and grounded.

That’s why when Dean “goes bad,” we get stressed out in ways that we don’t really even when it’s Sam who goes full Dexter (by killing a nurse duck taped to a table in a kill room). We can see Cas and Sam being fixed and repaired morally, but it’s always Dean who gets them back on their feet, dusts them off, and tells them to go walk it off.

But when Dean goes bad, the entire universe is shaken. Even the writers shy away from making Dean go as dark as we all know he can. After all, if Dean truly goes dark, almost nobody can stop him- maybe not even the writers themselves. Dexter’s already very dark, but there’s a superficial air to it. He can’t go any darker. He’s perfectly happy with his lot in life. He could stop following the Harry Code, but it’s as much an act of self-preservation as it is a moral code.

Dean’s darkness stems from something deeper and murkier. He likes to hunt and kill, because it gives him a feeling of self worth. But he keeps himself in check by specifically targeting the supernatural, because he doesn’t have it in him to go darker on his own. He’s not a serial killer or sociopath, but he has the skill set and destructive ability to mimic one. The darker he gets, the easier it gets for him, and that internal struggle of morals and actions and capabilities are what keeps him up most nights.

Where it’s most noticeable is in how they treat their brothers. Dean literally went to hell for his brother, stood by his side in a truly humble act of non-violence against Lucifer, and has done everything in his power to shield and protect Sam. He’s made mistakes, but those mistakes always came from Dean’s overriding need to protect his brother. The moment Dexter realized that his brother, Brian, was also a serial killer and unable to change (or want to change), he killed him. Maybe Dexter did it for the right reasons, but he still did it. It never would have crossed his mind to try to protect his brother or reform him or stop him in a non-violent way. And while Dexter mourned the loss of Brian, he still assumed that he had done the right thing- that he was in the right for everything he did (including throwing himself a make believe parade in his honor) and never realized his own actions or culpability. That putting his brother down was perfectly fine to the point where he didn’t have to mourn him.

In the end, it really boils down to this. Dean is the moral center of the Supernatural universe; Dexter only thinks he’s the moral center of the Dexter universe. Dean is the one who decides to let live, who to protect, who to kill, and who to not protect, and who to let die. When he makes a moral decision, he owns up to it, and, at times, has to be convinced not to do something. Dexter allows himself the luxury of being the good guy, but doesn’t accept the responsibility that goes along with it. Dean, however, assumes all responsibility for all things (whether he is responsible or not), and recognizes that he can make bad choices and do bad things. There are a lot of similarities between the two and even their methods, but Dean knows what he does and is uncomfortable with a lot of it. He loves and hates his lifestyle, and doesn’t know any better or how to stop. He’s happy to hunt, but he’s also dejected that he doesn’t think he can do anything else that’s safer or less scary. He’s trapped at this point in feeling that he’s a prisoner in this lifestyle, and has resigned himself to dying a violent, brutal death. It’s less pessimism and more sorrow and mourning of his ability to make choices and have had a less violent lifetime. Dexter is super comfy with his own life, and only gets stressed when someone might stop him from killing. So while we do see a lot of uneasy comparisons between Dexter and Dean, they’re only superficial. They do exist, but only because we know Dean has the ability to become a violent person who can go extremely dark, but Dean has it in himself to check it. To stop even himself from going dark as long as he’s able to tap into his internal self-control and moral aptitude.


End file.
